Daydream Delusion
by rebeccavis
Summary: AU based on the movie Before Sunset and the sequel to 'A Waltz for a Night'. Dan Humphrey and Blair Waldorf's lives are changed again seven years after they first met on a train on the way to Paris.
1. High School

_**A/N:** It's finally here! I present to you all the first chapter of the sequel to 'A Waltz for a Night', based on the movie Before Sunset. Thanks so much to everybody who read the previous fic. If you haven't read it then you probably ought to and I'd love it if you did, but it's not absolutely essential to reading this one. Thanks to **Céline** and **Rach** for reading this for me, and also to **Julian**, **Alyssa**, **Nicole** and the Tumblr Dair fandom for keeping our beloved ship alive. I own nothing and am just writing for my own enjoyment and to better cope with the terribleness that is Gossip Girl. I really hope you enjoy this and I'd love to hear your reviews/comments!_

The first thought that crossed Dan Humphrey's mind as his gaze turned towards the glistening chandelier hanging above his head was that it didn't feel like ten years since he had studied in this very building. The decoration was somewhat different to the last time he had been there and the place somehow felt far less imposing than it once had, but apart from that nothing seemed to have changed. On his way in, the hallways he had walked through looked much the same, as did the classrooms he'd caught a quick glimpse of through doors, and Dan found an all-too familiar detached feeling slowly beginning to creep back. He was a 28-year-old Yale graduate now and certainly a world away from the 18-year-old boy who had spent all of his years at school feeling like an outsider, and yet being back at his old high school seemed to trigger emotions he hadn't experienced in a long time.

Dan mused in his head that the Dan Humphrey of ten years ago, whose ghost he was starting to think might haunt this place, would probably be a little incredulous were he to catch a glimpse of his future self at the moment. Once upon a time, he had been infatuated with a beautiful blonde girl from school whom he had seen from afar and only spoken to once, but that girl had moved away before he'd even begun his junior year. Now, she was an equally beautiful 28-year-old woman, and she was also his date to the Constance Billard and St. Jude's ten-year reunion of the class of 2009. Wearing in low-cut golden dress with a slit up the side that showed off her impressively long legs, Serena van der Woodsen seemed to provoke smiles that matched the dazzling one on her face wherever she walked.

"Thanks again for coming with me tonight," Dan remarked as Serena waved across the room at someone she recognised, "I was worried it might be a little weird for you seeing as how you didn't actually graduate with the rest of us."

"Oh, don't worry. It's actually kind of fun seeing everyone again," Serena replied cheerfully, "I'm a little amazed anyone even remembers me."

"You're pretty hard to forget," Dan noted with a smile, "They're probably more likely to remember you than they are to remember me."

"Don't be ridiculous," Serena said with a gentle laugh, "If they don't remember you then you can always tell them how you're a published author about to release your first full-length novel, and then before you know it you'll have them wishing that they did."

"That's very nice of you to say. I hope you realise this _is_ Constance/St. Jude's we're talking about, though," Dan reminded Serena, his tone light as he raised an eyebrow at her, "Not that it's a competition, but if it were I'd be competing with people who've probably inherited multi-million dollar companies."

"You mean like Chuck Bass?" Serena said, nodding across the room and pulling a face, "Of course he'd be here. I can't believe I used to have _him_ for a stepbrother."

Dan glanced over his shoulder, following Serena's gaze towards a man in an expensive-looking tailored suit, standing close to the stage where the band was playing with a woman who looked barely twenty in one arm and a glass of what appeared to be scotch in his other hand. Dan's own hand ran absently over the small amount of stubble on his chin and he watched as Chuck Bass said something and his date laughed outrageously, to the point where Dan had to wonder what on earth could possibly be so funny. He had gone to school with the man who Serena had informed him now ran Bass Industries together with his father, but Dan could honestly remember very little about him from back then besides his name and the fact that he always seemed to hang around with another guy whom Dan remembered as being more charismatic. Serena, however, who'd had more experience with Chuck, had told him a few stories which had given him plenty of reasons to dislike the Bass Industries heir.

Just as Dan was about to turn to Serena and ask if she wanted a drink from the bar, much to his surprise Chuck looked directly at them and before long appeared to be walking in their direction. Serena pulled yet another face and momentarily looked as if she was searching for any excuse to get away, but Chuck had approached the two of them before she had time to come up with one.

"Well, well, what a nice surprise. I didn't expect to see you here," Chuck remarked with a smirk, not even bothering to introduce his date, "You look ravishing as always, Serena. Much like your mother, in fact. How is Lily these days?"

"Much happier now that she's not married to your dad," Serena replied calmly, "You really didn't have to come all the way over here just to ask me that, Chuck."

"Well, I also wanted to take a closer look at the specimen you appear to have brought along as your date for the evening," Chuck said, looking Dan up and down, "He cleans up reasonably well, but it's very easy to spot someone hiding underneath a designer suit. Where did you find him, wandering the streets? You always did have a soft spot for penniless tortured artists if I remember correctly."

"I'm Dan Humphrey. I went to St. Jude's," Dan noted, resisting the urge to roll his eyes, "I graduated with you, actually."

"You did?" Chuck said, "That's funny. I don't remember you at all. Humphrey, though, that name sounds familiar…"

"Maybe because my dad is the guy who Lily left your dad for," Dan stated, immediately causing Chuck's condescending expression to turn to one of extreme disdain. Dan merely observed calmly as Chuck took a long drink of his scotch, while Serena made little effort to hide her smirk.

"Come on, Crystal," Chuck declared after a moment, wrapping his arm around his date once more, "I'm sure we can find far less boring people in this room to talk to."

"Actually, my name's Candy…" the woman on Chuck's arm could be heard to say as she was led away, and then it was Dan's turn to barely conceal a grin.

"Wow. I guess some people really never do change," Serena remarked, shaking her head slightly as she and Dan began to head over to the bar, "Whenever I think I have a tiny bit of faith in humanity, along comes someone like that to take it away again."

"Hey, you're not being fair. I thought Candy seemed like a perfectly nice girl," Dan replied jokingly, still smiling, "She was just…unfortunate enough to be bestowed with a name that makes her sound like she could be a stripper. Or maybe a highly priced call girl."

"Don't be naïve, Dan. She was probably a call girl," Serena remarked, "I heard that's what Chuck spends most of his money on. That and alcohol and drugs and throwing huge parties in Bass hotels. You didn't hear it from me, but according to my mom his father was always complaining about how he spent much more time wasted than he did at Bass Industries business meetings."

"Now why does that not surprise me?" Dan wondered aloud. He brushed past a woman in a silver dress with a martini in her hand to order a beer for himself from the bartender, and then glanced at Serena to ask her what she wanted to drink. Once he'd ordered her cosmo, he turned around to rest his back against the bar, his gaze taking in the rest of the room. From his experience thus far, he had decided he was of the opinion that ten-year high school reunions really weren't all that interesting.

"I really can't imagine what it would be like to be legally related to Chuck Bass," Dan remarked to Serena, trying to spark up conversation, "But at least he's not an ex-boyfriend of yours. I think that might possibly be even worse."

"Oh, yes, thank God. There are a few of my ex-boyfriends here, but I wasn't with any of them for very long so I don't think I'm in any danger of them causing a scene. If Chuck was one of them, I'd be worried," Serena remarked with a chuckle, "So what about you? Can I expect to see any of your ex-girlfriends from high school crawling out of the woodwork?"

"No, definitely not. I only had one girlfriend in high school and she didn't even go to Constance," Dan replied, handing Serena her drink as it arrived before he downed some of his own beer, "You know that."

"That's right, I forgot. You were with her right up until college, right?" Serena questioned, "Until she cheated on you. And it took a trip all the way to Europe for you to be able to get over her."

"I'm so sorry that you were unfortunate enough to experience my late-night slightly drunken ramblings and that you still remember them," Dan remarked, to which Serena laughed, "It's pathetic, really. So I got my heart broken when I was a teenager – so did everybody. I wish somebody had explained to me back then that romantic love is temporary just like everything else. You read all these novels and watch all these movies about loves that last entire lifetimes, but real life isn't like that. Love, if it exists at all, is incredibly fleeting. You should just appreciate the moments you have, like moments when you make a real connection with someone…that's what really matters."

"And that's the story of how Dan Humphrey became a terrible cynic just like the rest of us," Serena teased, taking a sip from her cocktail, "Your book is pretty romantic, though, for someone who feels that way."

"My book is about a very specific moment in time," Dan pointed out, "It's not as if they…"

"Oh my God," Serena interrupted Dan suddenly, her eyes widening. She grabbed his arm with her free hand and began to tug him away from the bar, looking as if she was trying to hide her face. "This way," she hissed at him.

"What's going on?" Dan hissed back, looking confused.

"Pay attention to me," Serena instructed, "I need you to subtly look over your shoulder and tell me if there's a very good-looking guy with kind of light brown hair and a baby face looking like he might be making his way over here right now."

Dan's brow furrowed slightly, but he heeded Serena's words nonetheless and looked behind him. "Actually, there is," he answered her quietly, "Isn't that the guy Chuck used to be friends with?"

"Damn it!" Serena said, "Yes, that's Nate, Chuck's friend. Although they hate each other now, supposedly. Anyway, it doesn't matter. We need to go."

"Go? Why?" Dan questioned, "I'll admit this isn't the most exciting event I've ever been to, but I still haven't spoken to anyone who I used to hang out with. Did this Nate guy do something to you?"

"It's not Nate that I'm worried about. It's the woman he's with," Serena replied. Dan glanced over his shoulder again, but all he could see of the woman Nate was with was the open back of her silver dress and her brown hair tied up into an elegant knot. "She used to be my best friend back when I was a student at Constance," Serena explained further, "But she and I…well, let's say we didn't exactly part on good terms."

"What happened?" Dan asked, straining to get a better look at the woman.

"I was afraid you'd ask me that," Serena remarked with a sigh, "I sort of…I left without saying goodbye to her. You know why I left, I explained it to you, but I couldn't…I couldn't explain it to her because I did something really terrible to her and I couldn't face her after I'd done it. Now can we please just go?"

"Serena, that was what, over ten years ago?" Dan questioned, "What could you have possibly done that was so bad she'd still be mad at you even now?"

"I slept with her boyfriend," Serena admitted quietly.

Dan's brow furrowed again, a look of slight shock registering on his face. He thought he already knew pretty much all of Serena's dark secrets – and, as he had discovered not long after they'd met again, there were plenty of them – but even now it seemed that there were still aspects of her life that she hadn't told him about. He didn't have much time to ruminate on the subject, however, as all too soon he turned around to find himself face to face with Nate.

"Serena! I thought it was you. Long time no see," Nate remarked with a smile. He stepped forwards and for a moment looked as if he might be about to give Serena a hug, but he seemingly decided against it.

"It has been a long time. It's…great to see you, Nate," Serena replied, forcing a smile of her own, "How are you?"

"I'm good, I'm good," Nate answered, looking Serena up and down, "Wow. I can hardly believe that it's you standing in front of me, after all this time…" He shook his head and then called loudly over his shoulder: "Babe, come over here! It's Serena!"

"I'm sure she's busy," Serena affirmed before gesturing towards Dan, "Oh, by the way, Nate, this is Dan. He went to school with us but he kind of mixed in different circles, I think."

"You do look kind of familiar to me, actually," Nate remarked, shaking Dan's hand warmly.

"Yeah, same here," Dan said, deeming it best to bite his tongue and avoid attempting to make any kind of witty comment. Nate seemed like a reasonably decent person and Dan was still on the lookout for Serena's ex-best friend, who he expected was probably heading their way.

When Dan first set eyes on her, he was initially convinced that he had to be dreaming. After all, over the past seven years he'd had many, many dreams about her, and it seemed perfectly feasible that this might be one of them. In his dreams, however, she had always looked exactly the way she had when he'd last seen her, but this time she definitely looked different. Her hair was tied up elegantly, with just a few tendrils falling out to frame her face. She was wearing a long silver halter-neck dress, which was encrusted with beads and sequins to make it shimmer when it caught the light. Her neck and ears were adorned with expensive jewellery and she seemed to carry herself differently somehow, as if she had experienced far more – which, Dan supposed, she must have done. Her face, though, from her full lips to her perfectly shaped nose to her large brown eyes seemingly filled with innocence, remained exactly the same. Just as she had done seven years ago, she took his breath away.

"Serena. How…lovely to see you here," she declared, the smile on her face every bit as forced as Serena's as her gaze focused on the other woman. Dan knew that it was forced because the sight of her genuinely smiling and laughing seemed to be permanently etched onto his memory. She hadn't looked at him up until that point, but her eagerness to not look at or speak to Serena caused her to turn towards him, offering up her hand. "Hi, I'm…"

"Blair," Dan finished for her. Blair's eyes finally met his as their hands touched and both of their mouths fell open in disbelief.


	2. Announcement

Dear readers,

First and foremost, my apologies to those of you who received a notification about this and hoped it would be a new chapter. Believe me, I hoped that it would be, too. Instead, it's with a lot of sadness that I write to tell you all that actually there won't be any more chapters of Daydream Delusion.

I first started writing the predecessor to this fic, A Waltz for a Night, when I was struck by inspiration after rewatching two of my favourite movies, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. I really enjoyed writing A Waltz for a Night, which was based on Before Sunrise, and when I finished it the next course of action seemed logically to write a sequel based on the movie's sequel, Before Sunset, especially since it was actually one particular plot point in _that_ movie that made me think Dan and Blair could fit very nicely into a similar story. Thus, Daydream Delusion was born, and I was really overwhelmed by the response it recieved. I'm pretty sure the first chapter of it alone gained more reviews than any of my chapters of A Waltz for a Night, and I am so incredibly grateful to each and every one of you who took the time to leave feedback. I would continue to write it for all of you, and I only wished that my inspiration worked that way.

The truth is that Season 6 of Gossip Girl seems to have truly destroyed my ability to write Dan and Blair. I didn't even watch the season, but as a consequence of being on the internet I know almost everything about what happened, and it just left me completely at sea. I always thought (or hoped) I had a reasonably good grasp on Dan and Blair as characters, but if the last season of the show is anything to go by then it seems I didn't at all. I don't know who those people were in Season 6, but they sure weren't the characters I was so fond of and who made me stick with the show even at its most ridiculous points. The end reveal of Gossip Girl was just the icing on the cake for me, and I still can scarcely believe a television show can think its audience is that stupid. As a result of all of the above, I have found it impossible to continue this story. For a while I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter, that Dan and Blair were the same characters and this was an alternate universe setting anyway, but my disappointment with Gossip Girl has been such that I've found I have no inspiration to do anything related to it and don't think that's going to change. I felt it unfair to just leave all of you hanging, especially as I still get e-mails about new people following this story, so I decided to write this to at least provide some kind of explanation. I also wanted to show my gratitude in some way particularly to those who gave feedback, so this week I am going to be sending those of you who left a review (and have messaging enabled) a summary on what my plans were for this fic. I know it's not much, but it's just my way of saying how much I truly appreciate you all.

I'm going to leave this message up for a while, and then I will delete this fic from the website (though I will leave A Waltz for a Night up). I am still writing fic, but at the moment pretty much exclusively for Game of Thrones and for a very specific pairing, so I understand if many of those of you who are reading this might not be interested in my new stuff. If you think you might be, though, I invite you to check out my profile. You can also find me on Twitter at rebeccavis and on Tumblr at margaeryisthequeen, should you be so inclined. Again, I cannot thank enough those of you who took the time to read Daydream Delusion and A Waltz for a Night, and who made me smile with all of your comments and messages. I hope to hear from you in some shape or form in the future.

All the best,

**rebeccavis**


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